I came to Texas from England over thirty years ago, now. My prior experience of living in the U.S. had been during my year abroad as part of my undergraduate degree at the University of Warwick, embedded in the department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Although unbeknownst to me at the time my […]
The Isles: A History, by Norman Davies (1999)
Published in 1999, The Isles, traces the development of the political entities and cultural identities inhabiting the archipelagos currently divided into the nations of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, by Frederick John Dealtry Lugard (1965)
by Ogechukwu Ezekwem Born to an English family in India in 1858, Frederick Lugard rose to become the colonial Governor of Nigeria, Britain’s most valued African possession. His The Dual Mandate, first published in 1922, became a handbook for all British administrators in tropical Africa, and influenced British colonial policies across the continent. It offered […]
Seeing John Donne Speak: The New Archive (No. 14)
by Henry Wiencek Ever wish you were actually there to experience a moment in history? What would it have been like to witness British soldiers marching into Concord? Or to hear the German bombers flying over London? The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project believes it can provide that very sensation—or at least approximate it. A group […]
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, by Robert C. Allen (2009)
by Ben Weiss Robert Allen’s The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective constitutes an impressively holistic approach in economic history to a topic that can be infinitely multifaceted and is often severely oversimplified. Considering that the causes of British industrialization have been the subject of heavy debate for the better part of a century, if […]
Election Fraud! Read All About It!
On October 25, 1924, four days before the British general election, the conservative mass-circulation newspaper, the Daily Mail, published a letter that caused a political sensation. The front-page headline read: “Civil War Plot by Socialists’ Masters: Moscow’s Orders to Our Reds: Great Plot Disclosed Yesterday.”
The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson (2000)
After finishing the book, the reader will realize that its subtitle, “Explaining World War I,” is far more clever than it appears at first glance. The Pity of War offers not quite a history of the First World War, but rather a history of Great Britain and the First World War; for Ferguson, the two are inseparable.
Samuel Pepys Tweets
“Took my wife, and Mercer, and Deb., to Bartholomew Fair, and there did see a ridiculous, obscene little stage-play, called “Marry Andrey.” While this may seem rather boring in content, it is extraordinary considering that Samuel Pepys originally wrote that in 1668. And now it is a tweet.